Stone of Tears (84 page)

She came swimming through the rushes toward him. “Before you can have the soap, you must wash my back.”

Richard let out an aggravated sigh. “All right, if I wash your back, will you then go back on your side?”

She presented her back to him. “If you do a proper job.”

When she was satisfied, she finally went back to get dressed while he washed. She told him over the chirp of bugs and the trill of frogs that she was hungry. He was pulling his pants on while she called for him to hurry so they could eat.

He threw his shirt over his shoulder and ran to catch up with her as she headed toward the smell of cooking. She looked much better clean. Her hair looked like a normal person, instead of a wild animal. She no more looked like a savage, but somehow noble.

It wasn’t dark yet, but getting close to it. The mist that had formed over the pond and was drifting in around them from behind. The trees were disappearing in the gathering fog.

As the two of them stepped into the ring of light around the fire, Sister Verna stood. Richard was putting his right arm through his sleeve when he froze at the wide-eyed look on Sister Verna’s face. She was staring at his chest, at the thing he had never let her see before.

At the scar. At the handprint burned there. At the handprint that was a constant reminder of who fathered him.

Sister Verna was as white as a spirit. Her voice was so soft he had to strain to hear her. “Where did you get that?”

Du Chaillu was staring a the scar, too.

Richard pulled his shirt closed. “I told you before, Darken Rahl burned me with his hand. You said I was only having visions.”

Her gaze slowly rose to meet his. They were filled with something he had never seen in them before. Unbridled fear.

“Richard,” she whispered, “you must not show anyone at the Palace what you have upon you. Except the Prelate. She may know what to do. You must show her. But no one else.” She stepped closer. “Do you understand? No one!”

Richard slowly buttoned his shirt. “Why?”

“Because, if you do, they will kill you. That is the mark of the Nameless One.” Her tongue wet her lips. “Sins of the father.”

From the distance came the plaintive howl of wolves. Du Chaillu shuddered and hugged herself as she stared off into the deepening fog.

“People will die tonight,” Du Chaillu whispered.

Richard frowned at her. “What are you talking about?”

“Wolves. When wolves howl like that in the mist, they are foretelling that people are to die violently in the night, in the mist.”

They materialized out of fog and mist, the white fangs of death. The startled prey, at first immobilized by bone chilling fright, jumped to flee before the white death. Fangs of white steel ripped into them without mercy as they bolted for their lives. Death squeals tore the night air with their terror. Hysteria sent them running heedlessly onto the waiting cold, white steel.

Fearless men tasted fear before they died.

Pandemonium spread on a wild uproar of noise. The ringing chime of steel, the splintering of wood, the ripping of canvas, the groan of leather, the pop of bones, the whoosh of fire, the crash of wagons, the thuds of flesh and bone hitting ground, and the screams of man and beast all joined into one long cacophony of terror. The wave of white death drove the tumult before it.

The sharp smell of blood washed through the air, over the sweet aroma of blazing wood, the acrid tang of igniting lamp oil, the smoky smack of flaming pitch, and the gagging stench of burning fur and flesh.

What wasn’t wet with the cold mist was greasy-slick with hot blood.

The white, steel fangs now were coated with blood and gore; white snow became a soggy mat of red splashes. The cold air was seared by gouts of flame that leapt up to turn the white fog an incandescent orange. Sinister, dark clouds of smoke hugged the ground while the sky burned overhead.

Arrows zipped past, spears arced through the air, splintered lances spun away into the mist, and severed pike heads whirled off into the darkness. Remnants of torn tents flapped and fluttered as if battered by a furious storm. Swords rose and fell in waves, driven by the grunts which accompanied frantic effort.

Men ran in every direction, like frenzied ants. Some tumbled to the ground, spilling their viscera across the snow. One of the wounded, blinded by blood, stumbled aimlessly until a white shadow swept by, a spirit of death, cutting him down. A wagon wheel bounced past, its progress quickly obscured from view by dark curtains of acrid smoke that drifted past.

No alarm had been raised; the sentries were long dead. Few in camp had realized what was happening until it was upon them.

The camp of the Imperial Order had lately been a place of noise and wild celebration, and for many, in their drunken state, it was hard to tell anything of consequence was happening. Many of the men, poisoned by the bandu in the ale, lay sick around fires. Many were so weak they burned to death without trying to escape flaming tents. Others were in such a drunken stupor that they actually smiled at the men who drove swords through their guts.

Even the ones who were not drunk, or who were not drunk to the point of dullness, didn’t truly appreciate what was happening. Their camp was often a place of raucous noise and confusion. Huge bonfires roared throughout the night, for warmth, and as gathering places. They were generally the only reference points in the disorderly layout, so the fires of destruction caused little concern, except in the immediate area.

Among D’Harans, fighting in the camps was simply part of the revelry, and men screaming when they were stabbed in altercations was not noteworthy. What one had was only his if he was fierce enough to keep it from others who were always ready to take it. Alliances among D’Harans were shifting sands that could last a lifetime or, more commonly, for as little as an hour, when a new alliance became more advantageous or profitable. The drinking, and the poison, dulled their grasp of the sheer volume of screams.

In battle they were disciplined, but when not in battle, they were ungoverned to the point of anarchy. Pay, for D’Harans on expeditions, was in large part a share of the plunder—they had looted Ebinissia, despite all their talk of a new law—and having that new plunder made them perhaps less than single-minded in their devotion to duty. At battle, or the first sound of an alarm, they became a single unified fighting machine, almost an entity of one mind, but in camp, without the overriding purpose of war, they became thousands of individuals, all bent on serving their own self-interest.

Without an alarm to warn them, they paid the added noise and screaming little attention. Above the noise of their own business, trading, stories, laughter, drinking, gambling, fighting, and whoring, the unheralded battle a short distance away went largely unnoticed. The officers would call them if needed. Without that call to duty, their life was their own, and someone else’s troubles were not theirs. They were unprepared when the white death materialized.

The sight of white spirits appearing among them was a paralyzing force. Many a man wailed in fear of the Shahari spirits. Many envisioned that the separation between the world of the living and the world of the dead had evaporated. Or that they had somehow been suddenly cast into the underworld.

Without the ale, both poisoned and unadulterated, it might not be so. As it was, the drink, and their confidence in their numbers and strength, left them vulnerable as they would never be again. But not all were drunk, or dull. Some rose up fiercely.

Kahlan watched it all from atop her dancing warhorse. In a sea of raw, unbridled emotion, she wore her Confessor’s face.

These men were neither moral nor ethical; they were animals who lived by no rule but might. They had raped the women at the Palace and had mercilessly butchered the people of Ebinissia, from the aged, down to newborn babes.

A man lunged through the ring of steel around her, grabbing at her saddle for support. He gaped at her, crying a prayer for mercy from the good spirits. She split his skull.

Kahlan wheeled her horse to face Sergent Cullen. “Have we captured the command tents?”

The Sergent signaled, and one of the white, naked men ran off to check as they drove deeper into the camp of the Order. When she spotted the horses, she gave the signal. From behind she heard the sound of galloping hooves, and the sharp rattle of chains: scythes of death, come to reap a crop of the living.

With a sound like a boy running past a picket fence with a stick in hand, the chain scythes being pulled at a full charge reaped a snapping of bone that meshed into a long, clacking roar. The beasts’ screams and the dull thuds as they slammed the ground drowned out the sound of galloping hooves and breaking bone.

Even the drunken enemy turned from the white spirits to stare at the ghastly spectacle. It was the last thing they saw. Men stumbled from their tents, to watch without understanding what it was that was occurring before their eyes. Others wandered aimlessly, mugs in hand, as if at a fair, drunkenly looking from one sight to another. There were so many, some had to wait a bit for their turn to die.

Some were not drunk and saw not spirits, but men painted white. They saw an attack, and understood well honed blades coming for them. A pocket of fierce counterattack was surrounded and broken, but not without cost. Kahlan rallied her men and drove her wedge of white steel deeper into the heart of the enemy’s camp.

She saw two men on huge draft horses, she couldn’t see who they were, having cut down all the horses they could find, take to charging down a line of tents, reaping havoc as well as helpless men. The chain caught something as solid as bedrock. It whipped the horses around into a brutal collision. The riders went down. Men with swords and axes swarmed over them.

A man with sword to hand, and sober, she was alarmed to note, appeared suddenly next to her leg. He looked up with a fierce glare. His sharp eyes made her feel suddenly nothing more than a naked woman sitting on a horse.

He took all of her in. “What the …”

A foot of steel erupted from his breastbone, driving a grunt from his lungs.

“Mother Confessor!” The naked man behind yanked his sword free and pointed with it. “The command tents are over there!”

A movement to the other side caught her attention. With a backhanded swing, she caught the side of a stumbling drunk’s neck.

“Let’s go! To the command tents! Now!”

Her men abandoned the enemy they were decimating to follow her as she jumped Nick over men and fires and crumpled wagons. As they followed, they didn’t stop to slaughter the confused, panicked, and drunken D’Harans everywhere, but cut down those they could if it didn’t slow their pace. Where necessary, they engaged the sporadic resistance.

The large command tents were surrounded by her white Galeans. They held a small group of about fifteen men at sword point. Before them lay a neat row of at least thirty bodies lying on their backs in the snow.

Other of her men were throwing battle standards and flags atop a large pile already smoldering and burning in the fire. Empty casks lay scattered in the snow. When their army had come under attack, the commanders had issued no orders. The army of the Imperial Order was without benefit of direction.

Lieutenant Sloan pointed with his sword to the line of bodies. “These officers were already dead. The poison did its work. These others were still alive, although not in the best of health. They were all lying about in their tents. We could hardly get them up. They asked us for rum, if you can believe it. We’ve held them, like you said.”

Kahlan surveyed the faces of the bodies in the snow. She didn’t see what she wanted. She looked to the faces of the captured officers. He wasn’t there either.

She directed her Confessor’s face to a Keltish officer at the end end of the line. “Where’s Riggs?”

He glared at her, and then spat. Kahlan lifter her gaze to the man holding him. She drew her finger across her throat. He didn’t hesitate. The officer went down in a heap.

She looked to the next officer. “Where’s Riggs?”

His eyes darted about. “I don’t know!”

Kahlan drew her finger across her throat. As he went down, she looked to the next man, a D’Haran commander.

“Where’s Riggs?”

His eyes were wide, but not at the two bleeding bodies beside him. His horror was for her. A spirit before him. He wet his lips.

“He was hurt, by the Mother Confessor. I mean, by you. Before.” His voice trembled. “When you were … alive.”

“Where is he!”

He winced, shaking his head vigorously. “I don’t know, great spirit! He was hurt, his face was cut by the horse. He is being tended to by the surgeons. I don’t know where their tents are.”

“Who knows where the surgeons tents are?”

Most trembled and shuddered as they shook their heads. Kahlan stepped her horse down the line of officers. She stopped before one she knew.

“General Karsh. I am
very
pleased to see you again. Where’s Riggs!”

“Wouldn’t tell you if I knew.” He grinned as he leered up from under his eyebrows. “You look better naked than I fancied. Why are you whoring with this lot? We could do you better than these boys.”

The man holding him twisted his arm until he cried out. “Show respect for the Mother Confessor, you Keltish pig!”

“Respect! For a whore holding a sword? Never!”

Kahlan leaned toward him. “These ‘boys’ have you under their blades. Every one is a better man that you, I would say.

“You wanted war, Karsh. You have your wish. You have war, now. A real war, not a slaughter of women and children, but a war led by me—the Mother Confessor. A woman. War without quarter.”

She sat up straight in her saddle, letting his eyes linger on her breasts. “I have a message, Karsh. A message for the Keeper. You will be with him presently. Tell him I said to make plenty of room; I’m sending all his disciples home.”

Her gaze swept down the line of men holding the officers. She drew her finger across her throat in a quick gesture. The response was just as quick.

As the bodies tumbled forward, she cried out, her hand darting to her neck. A stinging pain jolted her in the exact same place …

It was the pain of Darken Rahl’s lips on her neck, the pain she had felt when he had come to them in the spirit house, when he had burned Richard with his hand. When he had kissed her neck and silently promised her unimaginable horrors.

Men rushed forward. “Mother Confessor! What is it!”

She took her hand away. Blood coated her white fingers. She couldn’t say how she knew, but she knew without doubt that the blood was drawn by the perfect, snow white teeth of Darken Rahl.

“Mother Confessor! There’s blood on your neck!”

“It’s nothing. I’m all right. I must have just been nicked by an arrow, that’s all.” She gathered her wits and courage. “Put the head of every officer on a pole, for all their men to see, to let them know they are without leaders. And hurry.”

By the time the last dripping head was hoisted up, D’Harans were pouring in from all sides. Most were drunk, laughing as if it were nothing more than a drunken brawl. But inefficient and clumsy as they were, their numbers were alarming. They were like a swarm of bees; for every one knocked down, ten replaced him.

Her men fought fiercely, but they were no match for the overwhelming numbers sweeping in. Men she had talked to, reassured, inspired, yelled at and smiled to, were falling with cries of pain and terror. They had been here too long.

Ahead, a pitched battle erupted. The Galeans were being driven back. If they were driven back, they had no chance of escape. They couldn’t go back the way they had come, back to men who would have had time to have been sobered by the carnage around them, to gather their senses, and their spirit.